"What we have learned here is love tastes bitter when its gone."

- Shame by Matchbox 20

It seemed unbelievably cruel to Elizabeth that she had spent her entire life in love with only one man and now found herself alone raising their only son. She still couldn't figure out where she had gone wrong. What stomach-churning crime had she committed that she had to give up her husband as penance? He had been a good man, honest and loyal beyond comprehension. There was nothing that anyone could ever do to make him turn his back on them. He loved his family with every fiber in his being and the only way to ever really hurt him was to harm someone that he cared about. But no one ever wanted to cause Lucky any pain. Everyone who knew him seemed to fall as in love with him as she had. She could still remember every detail of the day she met him, as if she had just lived through it moments ago. Had it really only been twelve years ago? It seemed ridiculous to admit that she had only spent a decade with the man she loved before he was ripped out of her very own arms. She could still see his blood dripping onto her skin, staining her for all eternity. She felt the sticky, warmth of it sliding across her wrists. Would she ever be able to wash it away?

"You're going to stunt your growth." His voice was like a melody in her mind. She took a drag off her cigarette, not really giving a damn about the boy that lurked in the shadows. Why should she care that the mere sound of his voice sent chills down her spine like an electrical current? She wanted nothing to do with this pitiful town or its occupants. She had no intention of sinking into its quicksand like everyone else so joyfully seemed to. She had every intention of returning to the city the first chance she got, even if it meant dealing with her mother's picture-perfect world every day. Her stranger stepped into the hazy fluorescent light and she finally got a glimpse of his sandy brown hair and expressive eyes. She had to take another hit off her cigarette just to calm herself.

"Well, I can wear heels." Elizabeth quipped playfully, holding up her left ankle to show off her shiny black stilettos. "What's your excuse?"

"I don't think I would be able to pull them off quite the way you do." He grinned in a way that made her teenage heart skip a beat.

Her tongue seemed to tie into knots as her mind drew a blank on what to say next. She had never had this problem before. It was disconcerting for her not to be the cool and collected one in any given situation. Her heart sank into her stomach when a petite girl danced up to his side, looping her arm through is. She smiled brightly up at her friend before turning to Elizabeth.

"I'm Robin. This tongue-tied idiot is Lucky. And that's Em and Nik." Robin pointed to a tan boy with jet-black hair and a younger girl that was bursting with life. The names rolled through Liz's mind as she tried to connect them to the new faces.

"Lucky? What kind of name is that?" She should've kept her mouth shut. It just seemed to slip past her blood-red lips. The smoke from her cigarette swirled between them as the newcomers joined their small crowd outside the tiny diner.

"Lucas Lorenzo Spencer Jr., at your service madam." The boy was smirking at her, obviously amused with the fact that he could so easily fluster her. It annoyed her beyond belief to realize that she was blushing. She could feel her cheeks warm and knew that they had to be the brightest shade of crimson. "So, what's your name?"

"Elizabeth."

"She doesn't say much, does she?" The auburn-haired girl was staring at her quizzically. Liz realized that the younger girl must be Em. That meant that the tall, dark, and handsome one was Nik. Robin smacked the younger girl's shoulder playfully, shooting her a look of pure warning. "What did you hit me for? And don't give me that look. I was just commenting."

"Emily, stop being rude." Nik spoke for the first time, tugging on Emily's shirt and leading her towards the diner doors. He got her about halfway there before she spun around and glided back to them with the grace of a ballerina. Nikolas sighed as he turned back to speak to Liz. "I profoundly apologize in advance for whatever she's about to say."

Em glanced at him over her shoulder, sticking her tongue out at him with a grin that spelled trouble. "I was just going to ask you, Elizabeth, if you would like to join us for a sugar high." Emily held out her hand in such an inviting way that Liz dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it with the heel of her shoe. What else did she have to do? Plus, these people were amusing and she could use a good laugh. It didn't mean that she had to stay. It was one dinner. She could still leave whenever she wanted to.

"There is one small rule though." Robin warned as she stepped away from Lucky and swung her arm around Liz's shoulder. Lucky muffled his laughter with a cough as he came up beside her. "Once you're in our group, you don't get out. It's a life sentence."

Robin had been right back then. Their friendship had been a life sentence and she had never once tried to escape it. They had become her family, filling the void inside of her that she had so desperately tried to ignore her entire life. They were responsible for every moment of her happiness over the years. She knew that if she had never met them that night, had never gone into the diner with them, that she wouldn't have her son. She wouldn't trade Cameron for the world, even if it meant that she never would have had to endure the pain that she had experienced. She would die a thousand deaths if it meant that she got to keep her baby safe at night. He was every single one of her and Lucky's dreams come true. They couldn't have asked for anything better than the little angel they had been blessed with. She only wished that Lucky could have met their son, even once. It would've been love at first sight.

Elizabeth brushed her son's curly hair back out of his eyes. He was always so quiet and part of her wondered if it was a sign that she was a bad mother. Weren't four year old little boys supposed to be running around and causing chaos? Her son played on his own, careful to never disturb anyone else unless he absolutely had to. She could feel the fear rushing through her veins. It wasn't supposed to be this scary. But, then again, she wasn't meant to be doing this alone. She was supposed to be a happily married woman with a loving, doting husband and a fabulous, happy little boy. Instead she was a single mother who had buried her husband after two years of marriage. Maybe it was true that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

"Momma?" Cam's soft voice shocked her out of her reverie. He looked up at her with such innocence that she could almost physically feel her heart breaking inside of her chest.

"Yeah, baby?" Elizabeth knelt next to his bed, taking one of his tiny hands in hers and brushing a kiss along his knuckles. He had kicked his blankets off in his sleep, just like his father had always done. She pulled the blankets back up around his body as tears filled her eyes.

"Can we say night-night to Daddy?" It was something they did almost every night. It helped Cameron to talk to his father, to think that he was close, whenever he got scared at night. She hated to remind herself just how often that was. She nodded, biting her lip to hold the tears back as Cam stared at her for a long, silent moment. "I love you, Daddy."

"He loves you too, honey. He always has." Elizabeth assured her son quietly. She could barely get the words out as her son's gaze shifted to a photograph of Lucky. She was pregnant in the picture and Lucky had his hands on her stomach. She remembered that he was talking to the baby and feeling Cam kick in response. She couldn't remember what he had said, but she knew that they had been happy. It seemed only right that their son keep that picture with him. It was the closest thing they had to a family portrait.

She didn't move until long after Cameron had fallen asleep again. She kept his hand clutched in hers, afraid to let go of him. It almost seemed wrong for her to hold onto him so tightly, yet, she knew that she couldn't let go. He was all she had left of the man she loved. He was her baby... the last of her happiness... so, she couldn't find it in herself to care about right or wrong. Her husband's name fell from her lips as the tears finally began to slip down her pale face. Sometimes she felt like he was right there beside her, but for the most part she just felt empty.

She saw him all the time in their son's features and habits. She was constantly surrounded by reminders and memories of their time together, but for some reason it felt like she had been cheated out of what she deserved. She knew that Lucky was gone, but the pain she felt wasn't grief. It was something deeper... more jagged. There was no recovering from what had happened to her family. They had been so close to having it all and then it had been gone so quickly. Elizabeth could only wish that she could find a way to get it all back again.

--__--__--

Emily flipped through the photo album that Robin had left sitting on the small table in her room. The people in the pictures looked so happy. They almost seemed like they were strangers. When was the last time that she'd seen Elizabeth without tears lurking in her eyes since Lucky had died? Nikolas walked around with so much anger boiling inside of him that he constantly shook under the pressure. Robin was clearly hiding the real reason that she had come home and Em didn't feel like pushing the topic. If she did, she might have to give some answers for her own actions and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She couldn't understand her own thoughts, let alone explain them to anyone else. Lately, it was impossible to get her mind to stop racing long enough to form a coherent thought. Her heart raced inside of her chest as her fingertips danced across the faces of her best friends. It was the last picture taken of all five of them together, right before Robin's plane left for Paris. Lucky had his arms around Elizabeth, his lips brushing across her cheek. Nikolas had an arm around Robin and one around Emily. The two girls were locked in a tight, sisterly embrace with Elizabeth's hands in theirs. They looked like one big, happy family. It was probably the last time that they had all smiled before Robin had left and things had started to shatter.

"Emmy? Emmy-bear, come on! Put the camera down." Robin reached out to snatch the camera out of her grasp, but Elizabeth tugged the older girl backwards. "Not fair. I'm being double-teamed."

"You're the one who thought that you could pry that thing out of Em's hands." Nikolas chided playfully. "It was a stupid idea."

"Impossible is more like it." Lucky chimed in, pulling his girlfriend away from Robin with a sly smile that was really just meant for the two of them. The flash from the camera continued to go off at a rapid pace. Every second was being recorded in time, as well as their memories.

"You're all acting like this is it, like you're never going to see me again." Robin accused softly. The sadness lurking in Elizabeth and Emily's eyes confirmed her fear. "Oh, you guys, don't. I'll be home. I promise. I love you."

"We love you, too."

Emily had thousands of pictures from the years after Robin had gone to boarding school. She had evidence that Nikolas was once happy and in love with a stunning woman named Gia. She had gone overboard with her camera during Liz and Lucky's wedding and the pregnancy that had soon followed. Then Lucky had died and the pictures had stopped.

She only had a few left of her and Zander that hadn't been shredded in a fit of grief and rage. Sometimes it was almost as if she had imagined the entire relationship. There was no physical evidence that he had ever been in her life. Maybe she had just imagined it all. Would she wake up and find out that this had all been a horrid nightmare?

She knew the that she couldn't be so lucky. There was no cure to the emptiness that engulfed her. One of her oldest friends was dead and the love of her life had been taken from her just as unfairly. There was no escape from the torment that she faced daily. There was no way to change the path she had chosen. She only had herself to blame. She was a Quartermaine. When had love ever brought anything good into a person's life? She really should have known better. But then there was her Grandmother, Lila. The older woman had loved once in her life and that love had been all-consuming. Emily had always wished for a love such as that and she had thought that Zander was going to be it. He was supposed to be her happily ever after. Instead he was becoming her Hollywood horror.

"It can't always be this good." Emily pointed out softly as she gazed out the apartment window. The sun was setting over the water, casting off the most beautiful colors. She could hear Zander moving around behind her, but didn't bother to look.

"Why not?"

"Because good things don't last. There's a price that you have to pay for each second that you get to be happy." Emily touched her fingertips to the cool glass. "And I'm afraid to find out how bad it's going to get for it being this great."

"You're not making any sense." Zander brushed the hair away from her face, resting his head on her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her from behind.

"You'll see." Emily assured him quietly. "Someday we both will."

--__--__--

"Once upon a time..." Robin muttered the words beneath her breath as she paced along the docks. The sun had long since faded into the murky water. She could barely see the outline of Spoon Island in the distance. The familiarity of the town seemed to lull her into a false sense of security. Sometimes it seemed like Europe, and all of her mistakes there, had never happened. Maybe if she closed her eyes, clicked her heels together three times, and muttered some clever little rhyme it would all disappear.

"You're not really the lucky sort, are you?"
She gritted her teeth against the velvety voice that echoed through her mind. It was almost as if he stood right behind her. She could almost feel his hands running along her shoulders, down her arms, and around her waist. It all seemed so real. She could just let herself slip into the memories that were taking her over. It would be extremely simple. What was really keeping her here?

"You're never going to be able to let them go, are you? Those four little kids that you grew up with are always going to be in the damn room with us."

He was probably more right than she had ever been willing to admit. Lucky, Elizabeth, Emily, and Nikolas were as much a part of her as her own beating heart. She had tried to forget that, to push them aside, and she had failed miserably. All she had really managed to do was break a few promises that she should have tried harder to keep. Her fingers toyed with the end of her shirt-sleeve, fraying the grey fabric. The Fall air bit at her cheeks, reminding her of how cold upstate New York could get in the Winter. She knew everything about this town and yet it all seemed so new to her.

"You're obsessed with feeling things, Robin. Can't you just let go and let it happen?"

That had always been her problem, hadn't it? She couldn't let go even if her life depended on it. She hadn't been able to let go of Port Charles and then she hadn't been willing to part with him when things had gone bad. She had frustrated him so often. It was a miracle that their relationship had managed to survive throughout the years. She had loved him though, and she knew that he had never loved anyone but her. Was it wrong for her to even dream about loving again? Of course it was. She had pledged herself to him in all ways. His death didn't change that.

"You're a beautiful woman, Robin Scorpio. Any guy would be lucky to call you his wife. So why me? I'm a nobody. And you, sweetheart, are definitely someone."

She was two separate women, Robin realized. She was the teenager who had ruled these very streets that she now wandered through, but she was also the reckless child that had fallen in love and made so many mistakes. There was no way to reconcile the two into one person. They couldn't live the same life. They were too different. Were there any similarities? And if they were her pasts, who was she now? Was she still the girl her friends had once known? Was she the disaster from the last decade? Who did she even want to be? The questions swirled through her mind like a vicious tornado. It almost made her dizzy to even comprehend coming up with some answers.

"You're so loyal, my little tiger. No wonder you were so loved in New York."

Somehow his voice almost always sounded cruel in her thoughts. He had been so gentle with her. It didn't make sense for her to remember the sadistic side of him that she so rarely saw. She shouldn't be remembering him at all, she reminded herself bitterly. He was a piece of the girl she had left behind in Europe, although she knew with absolute certainty that he would always be in her blood. She had known that from the first time she set eyes on him. He had been everything her family had always warned her against and she had been unable to resist the temptation. It was true what they said about forbidden fruit. It was always the sweetest.

--__--__--

Maxie liked the night and the darkness it brought with it. It was easier to hide in the shadows and pretend that she hadn't just survived another day. Every heartbeat brought with it a wave of guilt. Why should she take another breath when her only biological siblings were dead? She hadn't been able to be there when they had buried Lulu, but she had sat on the cold ground with Elizabeth at Lucky's funeral when everything seemed to be too much to bear. She could still see the names carved into the marble stone, despite the late hour. Lucas Lorenzo Spencer Jr., Beloved Son, Husband, Brother, and Father. Below those common words was one other. Hero.

How many people had Lucky saved in his short lifetime? Maxie, of course, but also Emily and Elizabeth. He had saved them all in so many different ways. He was responsible for Cameron's existence. The world would be a much more miserable place without that little boy's bright smile. How could a man who had done such good be dead? They had blinked and he was gone. It had been as simple as that. One second she was holding his hand and talking to Elizabeth. The next, he had been dead. There had been nothing for the doctors to do. They spent over an hour working on his lifeless corpse, mainly because Liz had hysterically demanded it. No one had been able to rationalize with her that night. She had wanted her husband back and there was no shame in that. They all wanted him back, even now when so many years had passed. Maxie still wished he would call out her name, pull her into his arms, and tell her that things would look better in the morning. She knew that it wouldn't happen. She would never again get to cry on his shoulder. He wouldn't be saving her this time.

"You're the bravest kid in town, Maxie Jones." Lucky gripped her hand in his, careful not to disturb the hundreds of wires and tubes that she was connected to. The monitors beeped softly around them and the machines hummed in the silence. They both knew that surviving didn't equal bravery. Lulu had been the brave one in Maxie's eyes. She had died and her sister had lived as a result of it. "It must be the Spencer blood in you." The same blood that flowed through his veins and those of their father. It still didn't seem right that Luke was her biological father. It felt like Mac had been cheated yet again. How many different ways did Felicia need to remind him that Maxie wasn't his daughter? "Stop analyzing everything. You're going to become old before you turn sixteen."

"At least I might get to see sixteen." Maxie pointed out softly. Had it really been just two weeks ago that no one had thought that she would live through each night? Now she had a life to plan, a future to think about. Life seemed to be scarier than death. "Am I being ungrateful?"

"No, honey, you're being human." Lucky brushed a kiss across her forehead, still holding her delicate little hand in his. His strength and warmth flowed through her, reminding her that she had a reason to live. There were people who cared, who wanted to see her make it through each day.

"We love you, kiddo." Elizabeth gently touched her shoulder, too scared of jostling the wires to do much else. "Someone once told me that joining this little group was a life sentence. We can only be grateful that you get the same chance to enjoy it that we did."

Did she have the strength to save herself? It didn't seem likely. She was slowly drowning in all the secrets that she held and the lies she had told. How many times had Elizabeth begged Maxie to confide in her? How many nights had the words burned on her tongue while everything inside of her ached to confess it all? It was useless to even think about it. She would never unburden herself. She deserved to be tormented with the memories and every ounce of pain that they brought with them. She brushed her fingertips across her brother's name. "Tell me what to do, Lucky. Help me find a way."

People probably thought that she was crazy. She was sitting in a graveyard in the middle of the night talking to a tombstone. Lucky's body might be six feet below her, and though being here would never bring her closer to her brother, she did it anyway. It was the only thing she could think to do when things started to suffocate her. He was her safe haven, her home base.

"I saw Liz earlier. Maybe it was yesterday. I don't know. The days seem to blur together now. There's nothing to distinguish one hour from the next or the previous. She worries, Lucky. Cameron's doing so great and Robin's home now, but you know how Lizzie is. She wants everything to be perfect and everyone to be blissful. I try to be that for her. She deserves it. I just can't do it all the time. Not when I'm so alone and my head never seems to shut up."

"I think that someday we might be able to grin and bear it. I just don't know when that time will be." Emily lifted one of the paintings off her wall and gently set it on the floor at her feet. The walls of her apartment were slowly becoming empty and generically white. "How are you holding up?"

"My brother's dead and my sister in-law is a certifiable wreck." Maxie perched herself on the arm of the beige couch. The apartment looked like a ghost of what it had once been. There was no life in it anymore. All the pictures had vanished from the tables and the mantle. The paintings were slowly being piled up around the room. Everything seemed to slowly and surely fade away.

The night air bit at her face and she flinched against it. She was surprised that she even noticed the wind blowing against her. It was so hard to ever feel warm anymore. "What right do I have to be upset, Lucky? There are so many other people suffering. I should be focusing on what's left of our family and doing whatever I can to help. Instead I'm hiding out and avoiding everyone so that I don't have to fake another smile." She looked at the white roses that had been so delicately placed on the ground, noticing dully that they were starting to wilt. She knew that they were from Elizabeth. The flowers were always white, never red. It had been that way when Lucky had been alive too. A secret tradition of theirs that other people weren't privy to understanding. "How am I supposed to make myself be okay? I wish you were here. Everything would be better if we had you to hold onto."

Disclaimer: I do not own "Shame". It belongs to Matchbox 20.

I do not own General Hospital, its characters, not their portrayers. All rights are reserved to ABC.

Edited by Thanya. Thanks!